lousePhthirapteraany of a group of small, wingless, parasitic insects divisible into two main groups: the Amblycera and Ischnocera, or chewing or biting lice, which are parasites of birds and mammals, and the Anoplura, or sucking lice, parasites of mammals only. One of the sucking lice, the human louse, thrives in conditions of filth and overcrowding and is the carrier of typhus and louse-borne relapsing fever. Outbreaks of louse-borne diseases were frequent by-products of famine, war, and other disasters before the advent of insecticides (see infectious disease). Partly due to the widespread use of insecticidal shampoos for control, the head louse has developed resistance to many insecticides and is exhibiting a resurgence in many areas of the world. Heavy infestations of lice may cause intense skin irritation, and scratching for relief may lead to secondary infections. In domestic animals, rubbing and damage to hides and wool may also occur, and meat and egg production may be reduced. In badly infested birds, the feathers may be severely damaged. One of the dog lice is the intermediate host of the dog tapeworm, and a rat louse is a transmitter of murine typhus among rats.

General features

The flattened bodies of lice range from 0.33 mm to 11 mm (0.013 to 0.433 inch) in length and are whitish, yellow, brown, or black. Probably all species of birds have chewing lice, and most mammals have either chewing or sucking lice (Anoplura) or both. There are about 2,900 known species of Amblycera and Ischnocera, with many others still undescribed, and about 500 species of Anoplura. No lice have been taken from the platypus (duckbill) or from anteaters and armadillos, and none are known from bats or whales. The density of louse populations varies enormously on different individuals and also varies seasonally. Sick animals and birds with damaged bills, probably because of the absence of grooming and preening, may have abnormally large numbers: more than 14,000 have been reported on a sick fox and more than 7,000 on a cormorant with a damaged bill. The numbers found on healthy hosts are usually considerably smaller. Apart from grooming and preening by the host, lice and their eggs may be controlled by predatory mites, dust baths, intense sunlight, and continuous wetting.

Natural history

Life cycle

With the exception of the human body louse, lice spend their entire life cycle, from egg to adult, on the host. The females are usually larger than the males and often outnumber them on any one host. In some species males are rarely found, and reproduction is by unfertilized eggs (parthenogenetic). The eggs are laid singly or in clumps, usually cemented to a feather or hair. The human body louse lays its eggs on clothing next to the skin. The eggs may be simple ovoid structures glistening white among the feathers or hairs or may be heavily sculptured or ornamented with projections that assist in the attachment of the egg or serve in gas exchange. When the nymph within the egg is ready to hatch, it sucks in air through its mouth. The air passes through the alimentary canal and accumulates behind the nymph until sufficient pressure is built up to force off the egg cap (operculum). In many species the nymph also has a sharp platelike structure, the hatching organ, in the head region, which is also used to open the operculum. The emergent nymph is similar to the adult but is smaller and uncoloured, has fewer hairs, and differs in certain other morphological details.

Metamorphosis in the lice is simple, the nymphs molting three times, each of the three stages between molts (instars) becoming larger and more like the adult. The duration of the different stages of development varies from species to species and within each species according to temperature. In the human louse the egg stage may last from six to 14 days and the stages from hatching to adult, eight to 16 days. The life cycle may be closely correlated with the particular habits of the host; e.g., the louse of the elephant seal must complete its life cycle during the three to five weeks, twice a year, that the elephant seal spends on shore.

Ecology

Sucking lice feed exclusively on blood and have mouthparts well adapted for this purpose. The delicate stylets are used to pierce the skin, and a salivary secretion is injected to prevent coagulation while the blood is sucked into the mouth. The stylets are retracted into the head when the louse is not feeding. The chewing lice of birds feed on feathers, or on feathers, blood, and tissue fluids, or on fluids only. The fluids are obtained either by gnawing the skin or, as in the poultry body louse, from the central pulp of a developing feather. The feather-eating Mallophaga are able to digest the keratin of feathers. It is probable that the chewing lice of mammals do not feed on wool or hairs but on skin debris, secretions, and perhaps sometimes blood and tissue fluids.

Many birds and mammals are infested by more than one species of lice. Many species of birds have at least four or five louse species. Each species has specific adaptations that allows it to inhabit specific areas of the host’s body. Among the avian chewing lice, some species occupy different body regions for resting, feeding, and egg laying. A louse is unable to live for more than short periods of time away from its host, and adaptations serve to maintain its close contact. It is attracted by body heat and repelled by light, which causes the louse to stay within the warmth and darkness of the host’s plumage or pelage. It is also probably sensitive to the smell of its host and the peculiarities of feathers and hairs that help the louse orient itself. A louse may leave its host temporarily to pass to another host of the same species or to a host of another species, such as from prey to predator. Chewing lice have often been found attached to louse flies (Hippoboscidae), also parasitic on birds and mammals, and on other insects by which they may be transferred to a new host. However, they may not be able to establish themselves on the new host because of chemical or physical incompatibility with the host as food or habitat. Some mammalian lice, for example, can lay their eggs only on hairs of a suitable diameter.

The infrequency of transfer from one host species to another leads to host specificity, or host restriction, in which a species of louse is found only on one species of host or a group of closely related host species. It is probable that some host-specific species have developed through isolation because there is simply no opportunity for the transfer of lice. Domestic and zoo animals sometimes have established populations of lice from different hosts, and pheasants and partridges often have flourishing populations of chicken lice. Heterodoxus spiniger, which is parasitic on domestic dogs in tropical regions, was most likely acquired relatively recently from an Australian marsupial.

Form and function

The louse body is flattened dorsoventrally with the long axis of the head horizontal, enabling it to lie close along the feathers or hairs for attachment or feeding. The shape of the head and body varies considerably, especially in the avian chewing lice, in adaptation to the different ecological niches on the body of the host. Birds with white plumage, such as swans, have a white body louse, while the dark-plumaged coot has an almost black body louse. The antennae are short, three- to five-segmented, sometimes modified in the male as clasping organs to hold the female during copulation. The mouthparts are biting in the Mallophaga and strongly modified for sucking in the Anoplura. The Anoplura have three stylets enclosed in a sheath within the head, and a small proboscis armed with recurved toothlike processes, probably for holding the skin during feeding. The elephant louse has chewing mouthparts, with the modified mandibles borne on the end of a long proboscis. The thorax may have three visible segments, may have either the mesothorax and metathorax fused, or may have all three fused into a single segment as in the Anoplura. The legs are well developed with the tarsus being one- to two-segmented. There are two claws in the avian inhabiting Mallophaga and a single claw in some of the mammal-infesting families. The Anoplura have a single claw opposed to a tibial process forming a hair-clasping organ.

The abdomen has eight to 10 visible segments. There is one pair of thoracic breathing pores (spiracles) and a maximum of six abdominal pairs. The eversible male genitalia provide important characters for the classification of species. The female has no well-defined ovipositor, but various lobes present on the last two segments of some species may act as guides to the eggs during laying. The alimentary canal in the Mallophaga is composed of the esophagus, a well-developed crop and midgut, a smaller hindgut, four malpighian tubules, and a rectum with six papillae. The crop is either a simple swelling between esophagus and midgut or a diverticulum from the esophagus. In the Anoplura the esophagus passes straight into the large midgut with or without a swelling forming a crop. There is also a strong pump, associated with the esophagus, for sucking up the blood. Members of the superfamily Amblycera have well-developed, comblike structures at the base of the crop, which prevent undigested feather parts or other particles from passing into the midgut; in the family Philopteridae these combs are smaller and lie at the anterior part of the crop, whereas the Trichodectidae and Anoplura have no crop teeth. Apart from the eyes, which are sensitive to light, the other sensory structures are the tactile hairs and the sense organs in the mouth and on the antenna, some of which function as taste and smell organs.

Evolution and paleontology

It is generally accepted that the lice are derived from the book lice (order Psocoptera). It is also accepted that the Anoplura are related to the Mallophaga, some authorities believing that they evolved from an ancestral stock before the division into the Amblycera and Ischnocera, others that they diverged from those Ischnocera already parasitic on mammals. The origins of the elephant louse are obscure.

Apart from a louse egg found in Baltic amber, there are no fossils that might provide information on the evolution of the lice. However, their host distribution is in some ways analogous to a fossil history. Mallophagan genera frequently have a number of species that are restricted to one species of bird or to a group of closely related birds, suggesting that the stock ancestral to the bird order was parasitized by an ancestral mallophagan stock that diverged and evolved along with the divergence and evolution of its bird hosts. This relationship between host and parasite may throw some light on the relationships of the hosts themselves. The flamingos, which are usually placed with the storks, are parasitized by three genera of Mallophaga found elsewhere only on ducks, geese, and swans and may therefore be more closely related to those birds than to storks. The louse most nearly related to the human body louse, is that of the chimpanzee, and to the human pubic louse that of the gorilla. However, a number of factors have obscured the direct relationship between louse species and host species. The most important of these is secondary infestation, which is the establishment of a louse species on a new and unrelated host. This may have happened at any stage during the evolution of host or parasite so that subsequent divergence will have obscured all traces of the original change of host.

Classification

Distinguishing taxonomic features

The important characters used in classifying lice at the subordinal level are mainly based on the mouthparts. Features separating the lower categories are the special modifications of mouthparts, crop, antennae, sutures, and internal thickening of the head capsule; the number and form of claws; the segmentation of thorax and abdomen; the form of body plates; the number of spiracles; the pattern of bristles (or setae); and features of the male genitalia and terminal segments of the abdomen.

Annotated classification

Lice can be included in one order, the Phthiraptera, being separated by the characters of the mouthparts into four suborders: Amblycera, Ischnocera, Rhynchophthirina, and Anoplura. The suborders Amblycera and Ischnocera contain the majority of Phthiraptera, consisting of approximately 2,900 described species.

Order PhthirapteraSmall dorso-ventrally flattened parasitic insects. Eyes reduced or absent, ocelli absent, antenna three- to five-segmented, mouthparts mandibulate or piercing. Obligate permanent ectoparasites of birds and mammals.Suborder Amblycera (chewing or biting lice)Mandibulate mouthparts. Parasites of birds and mammals. Antenna four- to five-segmented, third segment pedunculate; articulation of mandibles horizontal; two- to five-segmented maxillary palpus; crop simple.Family MenoponidaeWidespread parasites of birds, contained in about 60 genera.Family BoopidaeConfined to marsupials of Australasia, except for one species found on domestic dogs.Family LaemobothriidaeContains some of the largest Amblycera up to 11 millimetres in length. Parasites of birds of prey, rails, and some storks.Family RicinidaeParasites of passerines and hummingbirds.Family TrimenoponidaeParasites of New World marsupials and rodents.Family GyropidaeNew World, parasitic mainly on rodents, with one species on primates and one on peccaries.Suborder IschnoceraMandibulate mouthparts. Parasites of birds and mammals. Third antennal segment filiform; articulations of mandibles vertical; maxillary palpus absent; crop as diverticulum of esophagus; parasites of birds and mammals.Family PhilopteridaeParasites of birds, except for one genus (Trichophilopterus) on lemurs; contains approximately 130 genera recorded from all orders of birds, except the swifts and hummingbirds.Family TrichodectidaeApproximately 14 genera parasitic on mammals, rarely on primates, sloths, and rodents; more widespread on land carnivores, hyraxes, horses, donkeys, and artiodactyls, except pigs.Suborder RhynchophthirinaModified mandibles borne at end of long proboscis; filiform five-segmented antennae; meso- and metanotum fused; thoracic spiracle ventral; single tarsal claw; crop absent; one genus with two species: Haematomyzus elephantis on the African and Indian elephants and H. hopkinsi on the African wart hog.Suborder Anoplura (sucking lice)Piercing mouthparts in the form of three fine eversible stylets; filiform four- to five-segmented antennae; all three segments of thorax fused together; thoracic spiracle dorsal; single tarsal claw, at least on second and third legs; crop absent, or if present is a simple enlargement; about 500 species.Family Echinophthiriidae (seal lice)Parasitic on seals.Family Haematopinidae (wrinkled sucking lice)Includes two genera parasitic on pigs, cattle, deer, and horses.Family Hoplopleuridae (small mammal-sucking lice)A large family containing approximately 27 genera parasitic mainly on rodents but also on insectivores, primates, and one on an ungulate.Family Linognathidae (smooth sucking lice)Parasitic on artiodactyls and hyraxes, except for two species parasitic on carnivores.Family NeolinognathidaeTwo species parasitic on insectivores.Family Pediculidae (human lice)Two genera parasitic on man, the great apes, and on some of the New World monkeys, the last perhaps being secondarily acquired from man.

Critical appraisal

The classification given above is a currently accepted one. Other classifications rank the Anoplura and Mallophaga as separate orders, with the elephant louse placed in one or the other according to personal opinion. Some workers consider the Phthiraptera as comprising four suborders: the Amblycera, Ischnocera, Anoplura, and Rhynchophthirina. There are considerable differences in the number and extent of the mallophagan (Ischnoceran and Amblyceran) families recognized and also on the generic limits within the families. In the Anoplura, controversy continues on the relations of the genera to each other and in which families they should be included.

The lice of man are referred to by various names, depending on whether the head louse is considered as a distinct species or as a variety or subspecies of the body louse. At present they are probably best referred to under one name, Pediculus humanus, but if separated subspecifically they must be called Pediculus humanus humanus (the body louse) and Pediculus h. capitis (the head louse).